Alien Disaster (22 page)

‘Meet you at that bomber,’ Brandon said to Jason, and took off at a run before Tank could stop him. He dodged past groups of pilots and ducked under the noses of their jets. He ran up to the man under the stealth bomber and caught his arm.

Lieutenant Hewson turned and raised an eyebrow. ‘I had a feeling that I might see you again, Brandon,’ he said. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

‘I did,’ Brandon replied, breathing heavily after his run. ‘Long story, but now the aliens have it and I need to get it back. What about you? We last saw you driving south trying to outrun an earthquake.’

Hewson gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘When this is over, I’m going to write a book about all the crazy things that have happened to me this weekend.’

‘MI Zero has a secret cliff-top fighter base on the south coast that I managed to reach,’ he said. ‘Well, they did have until the aliens levelled it. But I managed to get out in this beauty’—he slapped the hull of the bomber—‘and bring it back here.’

‘Is it loaded?’ Brandon asked.

‘With a nuclear bomb? It will be.’

‘The saucer’s bomb-proof,’ Brandon told him. ‘You said so yourself that they’d tried to nuke it.’

‘That’s true,’ Hewson agreed. ‘The saucer’s impenetrable … from the outside.’

Brandon looked around him, at the masses of fighter jets surrounding the stealth bomber, all being readied for take-off. There was a hush over the entire base though, despite all the activity. The pilots prepared quietly.

‘This is a suicide mission,’ Brandon realised. ‘All these jets are going to soak up the saucer’s firepower while you try and land this stealth bomber inside it and then set off the bomb!’

Hewson smiled sadly. ‘You weren’t hoping for a ride, were you?.’

Jason arrived at the scene with Tank hot on his heels. Jason was amazed to see Hewson, and he jumped to attention with a crisp salute. ‘Private Brown reporting for duty, Sir!’ he quipped. Tank laughed.

‘We need to be on this mission,’ Brandon said seriously. ‘It doesn’t have to be a one-way trip.’

Hewson considered for only a moment. He went up the ramp at the back of the bomber and brought back a black fire-resistant Nomex suit and helmet. ‘I could do with a co-pilot,’ he said.

‘You go,’ Jason told Brandon. ‘But listen, no messing around this time. When you get close to your alien cylinder, you use it to bring down the bad guys. Then it’s straight back here to save Kat.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Brandon assured him. Then he noticed something on the far side of the airfield:
Discord
had been brought inside the base on the back of a long tank transporter. Although one of the rear thrusters was completely destroyed, now that the ship was upright again the damage didn’t look as bad as he had first thought. Could he get
Discord
flying again? He would have to get back into the ship’s computer and run a diagnostic.

‘You go with Hewson,’ he told Jason. ‘I’ll follow.’

Hewson looked across at
Discord
. ‘In that? It looks like its next trip should be to the scrapheap.’

‘Hey, that’s my ship you’re talking about,’ Brandon said as he headed off on his own.

Discord
really was Brandon’s ship now—in fact it was the only thing he had left he could call his own. He had lost his home and all his possessions—not that a collection of computer games and Lego sets seemed important right now—and of course he had lost his entire family. Gem was as good as lost to him too. He wondered if he could ever bring her back from whatever dark place her thirst for revenge had taken her. Words and negotiation weren’t exactly his strong point.

What exactly
was
his strong point? A clear head and a logical mind? Hardly the stuff that heroes were made of. Sitting alone in
Discord’s
cockpit, he studied the computer analysis of the ship’s state of repair: with one of the four main boosters out, as well as the rest of the damage that the ship had suffered in its adventures, the diagnosis was that
Discord
was operating at fifty-two percent functionality. Well, it could have been worse; Brandon still reckoned that he could fly it. Dravid’s parting shot hadn’t completely crippled the ship, and it was probably only because Jason had lost control that they had crashed.

From out of the cockpit window, Brandon could see a team gathering around Hewson’s bomber. The Chief of Joint Operations was there, carrying the metal case that Brandon had seen earlier. Tank, Lucky and six other armed marines were there too. The smallest soldier—Lucky—had the largest weapon: a metre-long
minigun
, fed by lengths of linked ammunition that she wore wrapped around her in bandoliers. Jason, dressed in black, and faceless in his helmet, stood beside Hewson for the team’s final briefing. Then everyone boarded the bomber via a ramp at the back.

Brandon searched
Discord’s
systems until he found the communications interface. There were hundreds of channels open around the base, but Brandon took a chance on one labelled MI0B2SSB and tuned in. ‘Testing one two three,’ he said out loud.

‘Is that you, Brandon?’ Hewson answered. ‘This is supposed to be a secure line.’

‘You need to update your security if you want to be alien-proof,’ Brandon joked. ‘Are you about to take off?’

‘As soon as we can. Jason’s sat right beside me. The chief and the rest of the team are in the back. I’ll patch you through so you can listen in to what they’re planning.’

The bomber started to roll towards the runway, joining a queue of jets hurrying to get airborne. Brandon engaged the smaller thrusters beneath
Discord
and slowly began to rotate the ship into position. If anyone noticed, it would be too late to stop him. As his hands worked the controls, he listened in on the conversation in the back of the bomber.

‘Don’t look so terrified,’ the chief was saying. ‘I’ve got my hands on some new intel that could swing this mission for us.’ He must be showing them the pics on Kat’s phone. ‘These configurations here are the hangar bay airlocks, and
here
… here are the weakest points of the opening mechanism. A precise tactical missile should be enough to knock them out and get us inside.’

The bomber’s engines fired up and the menacing black aircraft shot down the runway. Brandon hit the thrusters of his own ship and took to the skies. There were almost a hundred jets in the air above the base—more than there was room for on the airfield below. He could never hope to fly among them unnoticed. Brandon pushed a button on the flight console.

‘Brandon?’ Jason’s voice came through. ‘You just vanished? Did you crash?’

‘Don’t be so pessimistic,’ Brandon said. ‘I’ve engaged active camouflage, that’s all I’m the fast-moving rain cloud just behind you!’

Hewson was impressed. ‘Whatever technology that ship is packing, it’s obviously a lot more effective than the anti-reflective paint that this bird is smothered in. Stealth bombers are not as invisible as people think.’

The entire fleet was airborne now, the jets almost jockeying for position as they prepared to face the alien threat. The nose of every fighter was pointed south east. In the back of the bomber, the chief continued to refine the plan: ‘The enemy craft is divided into concentric armoured zones. It looks like each ring might be expendable, so we’ll have to get to the centre to deliver the payload. There’s something there called the
star reactor
. These maintenance tunnels are our best bet: these are the access hatches that you’ll need to look out for.’

A black dot appeared on the horizon. There was a blazing red glow beneath it. ‘Contact in forty klicks,’ Hewson noted. ‘Confirmed,’ came the response from one of the other jets. ‘
Holy crap
, they’ve set the entire plain on fire!’

The alien king’s latest weapon was a twenty metre wall of flames that ate up Salisbury Plain. As they got closer and closer to the mothership, Brandon could see that it was created by hundreds of blue laser beams spitting down in all directions. Then as they got closer still, the beams turned to shoot at the RAF. Brandon saw a Tornado, flying less than fifty metres to the right of Hewson’s bomber, get sliced down the middle by a laser. It dropped out of view in two halves.

Small attack saucers were spilling out of the mothership now and speeding towards them. They vastly outnumbered the RAF jets, but fortunately their aim was poor. The sky was criss-crossed with lasers and vapour trails.

Hewson was instructing Jason. ‘We have beam-riding missiles equipped,’ he said. ‘That joystick controls the beam: paint the target, lock the beam and the missiles will find it. You can even change target while the missile is in flight.’

‘Bring it on!’ Jason enthused. Brandon watched as Jason targeted a group of three saucers chasing down a Typhoon. He must have pulled the beam over the central saucer in the group, because when the missile hit, the explosion took out all three enemy craft.

‘Nice shot,’ Brandon congratulated him. He felt lost without weapons of his own, but as a saucer suddenly dropped into the space between
Discord
and the bomber, Brandon instinctively thrust forward and knocked the saucer to one side. It went spinning out of control and collided with one of its friends.

‘Thanks!’ Hewson said. ‘We didn’t even see that one!’

‘How many missiles do we have?’ Jason asked.

Swarms and swarms of fighter saucers were piling out of the mothership now, filling the sky like a cloud of angry insects.

‘Not enough,’ Hewson admitted. ‘Save some for when we get close to the big ship. I’ve got some new info about the weak points we need to target.’

‘We know you do,’ Jason said. ‘We’re not going to make it that far though. Look how many aliens we have to bust through!’

Hewson barrel-rolled the bomber to avoid an explosion that could have been a jet or a saucer, it was impossible to tell. He came out of the roll and began a series of even more complex manoeuvres in an attempt to pass through the cloud of enemy craft. Brandon wrestled with
Discord’s
joystick as he struggled to keep pace.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Jason said after a while. ‘These loop-the-loops aren’t getting us any closer.’

‘We’re still alive, aren’t we?’ Hewson shot back.

Then they suddenly got the break they needed. A cluster of thirty or so alien saucers simultaneously exploded, clearing the skies ahead. A large plane with long V-shaped wings arced overhead. Hewson was quick to take the chance provided and shot forward to the mothership.

‘What was that?’ Jason asked.

‘B-52 Stratofortress!’ Brandon answered excitedly.

‘Fitted with multiple Starstreak air-to-air missiles, by the looks of it,’ Hewson confirmed. ‘Looks like the Americans have decided to join the fun after all.’

But they were not the only ones. Another craft fell in beside the stealth bomber as it made a break through the gap in the alien defences. The black alien ship was just as angular and sinister as the bomber; they looked like a matching pair flying side-by-side.

‘Brandon!’ Jason shouted over the comm. ‘There’s something wrong with Hewson. He’s having a fit or something!’

‘It’s Gem!’ Brandon shouted back as he watched the stealth bomber start to drift down and to the side. He tried to focus his mind on the bionoids invading Hewson’s body. Once he had made the connection, he ripped them out and mentally flung them aside. Hewson came to his senses just in time to pull the bomber out of a terrifying spiral.

Dravid Karkor’s ship sped ahead of them. Brandon tried to pull the bionoids in towards him, but Gem was closer to them and her mind won the mental tug of war. ‘Follow them!’ Brandon yelled. ‘If we can get close enough again I can take back control of the bionoids!’

Karkor’s ugly ship dived almost vertically, then pulled up directly underneath the mothership and flew up the central shaft.

‘I can’t follow him there,’ Hewson said. ‘Jason, get ready to take out the hangar entrance.’

Jason went back to the joystick and painted the guidance beam over the outer rim of the mothership. He marked one spot at the right side of the hangar entrance, dragged the beam along, marked the left side, and then fired.

Two missiles shot forward; two explosions framed the hangar entrance, but the way in was still blocked by the barrel-like airlock which had come loose but had not fallen away. There wasn’t time to fire another missile. The bomber hurtled towards it, and
Discord
was seconds behind. Brandon took a deep breath …

The nose of the bomber hit the airlock dead-on and ripped it free from the weakened support structure. The rest of the bomber piled though after it and crashed down flat on the hangar floor, skidding and spinning until it was finally halted when it hit the opposite wall.

Brandon put
Discord
into a tight swerve and slammed on the landing thrusters. His touchdown was a lot more elegant than Hewson’s.

‘And we’re in,’ he said.

‘Again,’ Jason amended.

There was no time for Brandon to catch his breath. The massive hangar was empty one minute, and then swarming with balak soldiers the next. They came from all directions, roaring as they fired their laser guns. Brandon ran from
Discord’s
cockpit; when he made it to the exit ramp, a full-scale fire fight was in progress.